Curiosity Mars Rover Passes Kilometer of Driving

[Hans Tucker]

Ok...a big deal is made a IIS when a member reaches his/her 1000 post. Lets hear it for Curiosity reaching the 1km (1000 metres).


http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-222&rn=news.xml&rst=3851

[TrevorW]

Whoa 1klm how long has it been up there now ????

[Hans Tucker]

Landed in August 2012, so it has covered 1km in less than a year.

Opportunity on the other hand has been on the Mars surface for 10 years this month and covered 7,730.50 meters (4.80 miles).

[Ric]

Lots to see up there.

I suppose the scientist's don't want to go racing around and miss something important.

[TrevorW]

I don't want to sound cynical but you do realize that is slower than a garden snail.

Mar's is a big place and it's going to miss a lot in my opinion by being so slow as it restricts it's exploration to a small region of the planet.

[SkyViking]

Opportunity passed 7km years ago. It was launched 10 years ago but has only been roving the surface for 9 years and a bit. And it has currently travelled a whopping 35.76 km :D:thumbsup:

[jjjnettie]

:) Good on her. I can't wait to see what else she'll be showing us.

[leon]

Wow, that sure is slow, but i suppose exploration dose take time.

Leon

[Hans Tucker]

It takes time for the rover team to gain spatial awareness of where the rover is and the terrain around it. Then it has to plan the martian day (Sol) roving activity send the commands to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and then the orbiter has to transmit the commands to the rover below. The rover in turn has to transmit data back to JPL MSL for the rover team to plan future roving activities. The delay is in the Tx/Rx/Tx

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/tl_surface_nav.html

Maybe as Robotics software evolves future rovers can just go roving on their own.

[TrevorW]

Maybe they should have given it some semi autonomous ability when you consider that the surface area of Mars is 144,798,500 km it's going to be long dead before any significant area is explored. Ok the geeks will say it's $2.5 billion dollars well spent but I have my doubts. I think it will end up being nothing more than a curiosity.

[Hans Tucker]

Opinions on exploring dead planets aside the investment in Robotic technology is invaluable. It's a shame that critics of these programs don't think of the spin-offs.

[TrevorW]

Hans I beg to differ, robots currently being built today and even before the Curiosity have and will surpass it's ability. It's the old case of

"what $10000 for a toilet seat", yes I do think of the spin offs but a lot of beneficial technology is being developed and delivered outside the space industry today and in the future primarily due to the fact that the space industry is relatively dormant at the moment.

Lets just say we beg to differ, although it may seem it I'm not against space exploration.